With strong performances by the funds of their VC firm 3one4 Capital, the Pai brothers have found their mojo in backing startups that are not the usual VC heartthrobs
(From left) Pranav and Siddarth Pai’s early-stage VC firm 3one4 has assets under management of Rs 2,300 crore; Image: Hemant Mishra for Forbes India
Pranav and Siddarth Pai, founding partners of venture capital (VC) firm 3one4 Capital, always chose to stand out, not just from the crowd of mushrooming VC firms in India, but also among the startup businesses they chose to invest in. Six years since founding the company, this early-stage VC firm has assets under management of Rs 2,300 crore ($300 million), one unicorn in its portfolio, and is ranked as India’s top performer for two of its funds, according to a 2021 alternative assets report from Preqin, a global financial data and analytics platform.
Unlike high-profiled US-based VC and private equity (PE) investors, 3one4 has not invested in companies where the sustainability of business models is not clear. So the ever-popular food delivery engines, pure payment wallet platforms and horizontal ecommerce ventures—which have been the favourites of VC investors for years—were and still are all missing from their portfolio.
Instead, they have invested in businesses that are impacting and revolutionising our everyday lives: From mobility to banking and health care. Some of their latest investments include Exponent Energy, which provides flexible charging solutions for electric vehicles; Yulu, a mobility-as-a-service platform to make commuting in cities sustainable; Breathe Well Being, a clinically proven digital-first app for diabetes reversal and management; and Jupiter, India’s retail digital bank targeted towards millennials. 3one4 has also picked up various non-mainstream companies, which include Licious, an online meat and seafood ordering company, and Koo, a micro-blogging, multi-lingual social media platform that aims to challenge Twitter in its popularity.
Pranav, 32, launched the first fund of the firm 3one4 (a play on the mathematical formula π and the family name Pai)—along with Siddarth in 2016—after working with a Silicon Valley startup EdCast from 2013 to 2016. He had completed his electrical engineering from Stanford University prior to that, while Siddarth completed his graduation from St Joseph’s College of Commerce in Chennai. The brothers have a tough professional legacy to match, being the sons of Infosys’s former CFO and board member Mohandas Pai.
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